Tunisia and Senegal are the latest African countries to record the deadly coronavirus, joining Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria as African countries that have now confirmed cases.
Tunisia’s country’s health minister Abdelatif el-Maki told journalists on Monday that a 40-year-old Tunisian man, who arrived in the country by boat from Italy on 27 February tested positive for the virus.
In the case Senegal the country’s health minister, Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr said the patient is a French man who lives in Senegal.
He flew back from France on 26 February, Mr Sarr told journalists in the capital, Dakar on Monday.
Senegalese officials say they are now monitoring everyone who travelled on the same flight with the patient as well as his family.
The case in Senegal is the second in sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria last week confirmed one case.
Africa so far has 8 cases, still a low outbreak rate compared to other continents and that baffles health experts especially who had feared for Africa due to weak health systems.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization revealed in a meeting with African Union health ministers on February 22 that “Our biggest concern continues to be the potential for Covid-19 to spread in countries with weaker health systems.”
But with more than 86,000 cases and over 3,000 deaths recorded in some 60 countries worldwide, Africa has relatively reported of low outbreak rate.
Health experts are reportedly shocked about the low rate of the spread of the disease.
According to a France24 and AFP reporting, Professor Thumbi Ndung’u, from the African Institute for Health Research in Durban, South Africa said “nobody knows” why the epidemic is not more widespread in Africa.
Ndung’u said “Perhaps there is simply not that much travel between Africa and China.”
Another expert, Professor Yazdan Yazdanpanah who is head of the infectious diseases department at Bichat hospital in Paris was quoted in the same reporting that may be favourable climate factors have played a role in this shocking development.
“Perhaps the virus doesn’t spread in the African ecosystem, we don’t know,” Yazdanpanah said.
Victims of coronavirus often suffer from respiratory illness and this new strain of coronavirus was not previously identified in humans.
The virus is a global public health emergency, according to the World Health Organisation and there are concerns it could soon turn out into a global pandemic.
Source: Africafeeds.com
